Politics had nothing to do with a senior barrister being stripping of government work after he publicly criticised Queensland’s sex offender laws, the state’s premier, Campbell Newman, said.

Newman said neither he, nor any other politician, had anything to do with Stephen Keim, SC, being stripped of a brief to represent the government in an administrative law matter.

“There’s been no involvement by myself, the [attorney general Jarrod Bleijie] or any other politician,” he said. “What people need to know is the accusation of political involvement is untrue.”

But the opposition is calling for an independent judicial inquiry to determine if the attorney general ordered his director general or solicitor general to withdraw the work.

“This is political interference,” opposition leader Annastacia Palaszczuk said. “This is going back to the Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen days and is becoming a national embarrassment.”

Keim was asked late last year to represent the Crown in an administrative matter involving a Brisbane pub.

Bureaucrats later told him the justice department’s director general, John Sosso, hadn’t approved him for the job, the ABC reported.

Between receiving files for the matter then being stripped of the brief, Keim appeared on the ABC’s PM program criticising the government’s policies aimed at keeping sex offenders behind bars even if judges ordered they be freed.

The government had “turned upside down” the usual principles of the administration of justice, he told the program.

The president of Australian Lawyers Alliance Queensland, Michelle James, said it was unusual the head of a department had interfered with a decision that had already been made.

“... then, of course, there is the danger that [political] inference could be drawn,” she told ABC radio on Wednesday.

When asked whether he would have a problem with Keim receiving future work from the government, Newman said: “I have no problem whatsoever.”

Keim will deliver his first public speech since being stripped of the brief when he addresses the Australian Lawyers Alliance conference on the Gold Coast on Friday.